Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Patents Pokes-Per-Minute Limits
theodp writes "The USPTO lowered the bar again on Tuesday, granting U.S. Patent No. 8,296,373 to four Facebook inventors for Automatically Managing Objectionable Behavior in a Web-based Social Network, essentially warning users or suspending their accounts when their poking, friend requesting, and wall posting is deemed annoying. From the patent: 'Actions by a user exceeding the threshold may trigger the violation module 240 to take an action. For example, the point 360, which may represent fifty occurrences of an action in a five hour period, does not violate any of the policies as illustrated. However, the point 350, which represents fifty occurrences in a two hour period, violates the poke threshold 330 and the wall post threshold 340. Thus, if point 350 represents a user's actions of either poking or wall posting, then the policy is violated.'"
POKE 53281,0
No wonder the USPTO is overloaded. If this is the garbage that qualifies as patent worthy.
I'm going to patent ass-wiping thresholds now. Once you've wiped your ass 10 times in one sitting and you're still not clean then something has gone wrong...
Man, that is some hard core stuff right there. Is there anyone frequenting Slashdot with genius-level IQ that could possibly break down this unbelievably complex, non-obvious behavior and explain it to the rest of us? This is what having billions of dollars of capital can do for you - bring the brain power to a company that is required to make these kinds of amazing discoveries. What I'm looking forward to are the physics and mathematical papers that can expand on these newly found principles and constructs. It's really the stepping-off point to marvelous things for humanity. In fact, I do believe this may even bring us a step closer to the Grand Unified Theory.
Better known as 318230.
We might know of some prior art somewhere...
Hmmmm, my social networking site, which has been around for many many years, has had this since 2008 - I wonder if I should contact the USPTO?
Insert signature here...
At what point does pokes per minute turn into a tickle fight?
It is about time someone solved this poking problem! I am sure NASA will be licensing this technology right away!
AOL already implemented this with rate-limiting certain actions on AIM, and beefed it up even further with the warning system.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We used to configure eggdrop bots on IRC to auto-kick users that performed X behavior X times in a time period of X. *sigh*
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
Nope, Slashdot is not in violation of the patent. Investigation closed.
Better known as 318230.
Claim 1-If two showers in an apartment building with common hot water supply are turned on, hot water is provided to both. But if four showers are turned on each automatically receives a reduced amount of hot water. Claim 2-If a toilet is flushed while a shower is turned on, the reduced cold water supply changes the mix of hot and cold water, making the shower water temperature hotter. whilst the apartment building has an internet connection
Don't think you fully get this. You patented hundreds of years old technology for which there is clear prior art. I fixed that for you. Your patent should now stand up in court.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Slow down, Cowboy. You seem to have filed too many frivolous patents. Come back in 15 minutes.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I got back on Facebook in early September, after spending a while away from it. I'd been on it, on and off, since the .edu-address-required days, and have a lot of friends on there. I started adding them, and before long, Facebook decided I must clearly be a spammer, since no "new" user could possibly know a couple hundred people. It banned me from everything but posting to my own wall, accepting friend requests, and poking people, for a solid month.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Orc peons in Warcraft II had a poke limit in 1995.
Reminds me of MSN messenger.
The messenger used to limit sending of too many pokes per time unit, but it did nothing to limit receiving pokes.
Catch the correct packet, and sent it 10,000 times a second on repeat; Good times.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You can't do insane crap like this, like grant patents on token buckets, and then complain that people don't respect others' intellectual property. You're teaching us to despise your claims to ideas.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If this helps to prevent one more product from implementing the concept of poking, the patent system may just be worth it after all.
Plenty of prior fart
rewriting history since 2109
In concert band in high school, the girl next to me used to poke me every time the sheet music said "poco ritard." I should patent that before Facebook does. You know, to protect the entertainment rights of band geeks everywhere.
The current patent system makes it imperative that companies patent every line of code they write, so parasites like Intellectual Vultures don't come along and patent that thought and sue.
The code in question is basic code, but it's basic code that loads assembly instructions into memory at 16384, 16385, and 16386, then hands the cpu over to the program inserted at 16384. The 76 is a jmp command and the next two memory addresses contain 64 (0x40) and 0 (0x00) combining to 0x4000, which translates to 16384. In other words, it's assembly code for an infinite loop.
going to agree that "intellectual property" is neither?
The only instances of intellectual property theft that have occurred has been when human culture has been stolen and privatized by "intellectual property laws."
This space available.
The Journal of Social Media Interactive Dynamics, staffed by Facebook employees and reviewed by a few professors at the various new Facebook-funded University Chairs of Social Media Interactive Dynamics, would cost less than lawyers.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."